


Every problem is simple once the solution is explained to you

by belmanoir



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: First Time, Grief, Happy Ending, Holmes+Mary, I didn't use archive warnings because they talk about Mary's death but no one dies in the fic, I'm mad I already named a fic "Journeys end in lovers' meetings", M/M, Past Mary Morstan/John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, Self-Indulgent, Watson figures out he's bi, brief references to homophobia and sodomy laws, demisexual Holmes and Watson, food and weight talk, it would have been a good title for this, references to Mary's death, self-doubt and questioning around sexuality, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25694434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: The indisputable fact is this: I had been on terms of great intimacy with Holmes for close to a decade and a half, when I found that my sentiments towards him had undergone a sea-change.And yet, it was not a complete revolution. Throughout the course of my acquaintance with Holmes, I had asked myself on a number of occasions whether my feelings might conceivably be something warmer than friendship...Watson figures out how he feels. Now he just has to tell Holmes.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 106





	Every problem is simple once the solution is explained to you

**Author's Note:**

> I have moved up the date of the Tchaikovsky concert into the winter of 1894-5, it was actually in May '95. Watson gives no fucks about dates or continuity so I figure he wouldn't mind.
> 
> See tags for content warnings.

To this day I cannot fully explain what I am about to write. Indeed, I continue to feel slightly foolish, for it seems incredible that I should have lived more than forty years in ignorance of such an element in my own nature. I comfort myself, however, with the oft-repeated words of my friend and companion Sherlock Holmes, that every problem becomes very simple once the solution is explained to you.

The indisputable fact is this: I had been on terms of great intimacy with Holmes for close to a decade and a half, when I found that my sentiments towards him had undergone a sea-change.

And yet, it was not a complete revolution. Throughout the course of my acquaintance with Holmes, I had asked myself on a number of occasions whether my feelings might conceivably be something warmer than friendship. Nor was Holmes the only man, nor yet the first, to have evoked this vague inward searching and disquiet, tinged with embarrassment at having reached middle age without wholly knowing my own mind on such a fundamental point. Surely my very uncertainty was an argument against there being anything in it. I feared, even, that the persistent recurrence of the thought might be a sign of some latent paranoia.

And after all, even if it proved true, would the knowledge do me good, or evil? To act upon it might require a reorganization of my whole mode of life. I might take the plunge and find I had been mistaken after all. Or I might make an advance to Holmes, and find it spurned out of hand. Why hazard such an upheaval on what might be a mere passing fancy, when I was far from discontented with my association with Holmes as it stood? It employed my talents and energies to their utmost capacity, gifted me with a sense of real usefulness, and remained as fresh and absorbing with each passing year as it had been at the first.

Whether or not I was interested in men, I was certainly very interested in women. It seemed no deprivation, therefore, to confine my attentions to the fairer sex.

And then I met Mary, and adored her with every fiber of my being, and put the vexed question aside entirely.

If my poor sweet Mary had been luckier, there matters would have rested for the remainder of my days. Instead I lost her, and a year later regained my friend.

Fate brought me once more to Baker Street in the spring of 1894, and to my surprise and dismay, by winter the question I had so easily dismissed all my life had become all-consuming.

But it was a question no longer. Now the answer was unmistakable: I wanted Holmes. I burned to touch him—could do no more than glance at the idea of his touching _me,_ without a depth of reaction that alarmed me and left my spirits depressed. It was too sweet to think on, if I could not have it.

I hoped at first that it would pass. But weeks went by, and the sight of him reclining on our sofa did not cease to overwhelm me. The flourish with which he removed the breakfast covers made my teeth ache with frustrated desire. When we walked together, my awareness of his hand on my arm grew so acute that I felt my skin had been removed and my nerves exposed to the air.

At last I was obliged to confront the truth: I could violently suppress my passion; I could break with my friend for good; or I could speak. The first two choices repelled me. To do violence to my own heart, rather than confide in a friend, seemed monstrous. How often had I silently seconded Holmes, when he counseled some agonized client to make a clean breast of their troubles to one they loved? How sorry I had been for them, when they said they knew it to be impossible! I had congratulated myself, even, that the companions of my own heart had never given me cause to doubt that in them I might safely repose my entire trust.

Would I insult Holmes now, by doubting? In all the years I had watched people pour out to him their inmost hearts, I had never seen his brow cloud over or his eye spark with revulsion at aught, but that which voluntarily brought harm upon others.

I could not begin to guess what his own feelings might be, or what reply he might make me. I had never more bitterly regretted my own weak powers of perception. I was sure my tremblings and day-dreams could not have escaped _him,_ though his manner towards me had not changed.

But this uncertainty was surely the worst of it. Were the matter settled in the negative, I could contrive to swallow my dashed hopes, while Holmes would drown any lingering awkwardness in cheerful discursions upon cigarette stubs, modern art, and intriguing new poisons. Now I was in a ferment, as though in the grip of some dark mystery whose solution eluded me.

So, I resolved to speak. But I continued to put off the decisive moment, until at last a case forced my hand. 

The mystery had been a delicate one, and my wits more than usually dull. “Watson,” Holmes said, rather miffed, as we took the train back to London, “you might have declined to accompany me today, if our client’s case did not interest you.”

I flushed. “It was not that, Holmes.” In fact, instead of attending to his explanations as he examined the room for clues, I had been thrilling to the sound of his voice, and staring at his hands. “The truth is,” I said quietly, “that I have something of importance to relate to you, when we have reached Baker Street again. It may or may not surprise you, but I hope you will listen patiently.”

I tried not to let his troubled expression—which he swiftly concealed—strain my nerves, for nothing could be more natural after my heavy pronouncement. “Of course, my dear fellow,” he said. “I shall be honored by your confidence.”

Yet when we arrived home, he fussed rather long with his coffee cup, his pipe, the brushing of his hat, and his precise position in his chair, before he at last leaned back and steepled his fingers. “Well, Watson, I am at your disposal.” He shot me an ironic glance, eyes crinkling warmly, before his face smoothed into the languid, heavy-lidded mask that meant he was listening with his whole attention.

The weight of his concentration dried up my words, and for many moments I merely sat and watched him, thinking of the crossroads at which I stood, and the hopes I did not dare to look full upon. “I hardly know how to begin,” I said at length. “It seems absurd to have waited a dozen years to discover such a thing. But—of late I have become aware—oh, you will laugh at me.”

His eyes snapped open. I felt his keen regard go through me—all through me—down to my toes.

Leaning forward, he laid his hand perhaps a finger’s-breadth from where my own rested on the table. “My dear Watson, surely you know that there is nothing you could tell me of yourself which could fail to be of the greatest possible interest to me.”

It was not the words that moved me—it was not even the world of kindness and sympathy in his tone. No, it was the sight of his hand so close to mine. The long fingers were slightly spread, and there was a bit of sticking plaster on his thumb. My heart turned over within me, and I felt the strong pull of the negative magnet when it draws near to a positive one. My own fingers twitched. 

He remarked it and—withdrawing his hand with a small smile, as though he supposed me merely nervous—reclined once more in his chair and shut his eyes.

I nearly asked whether he could guess what I wished to say. But if I was not as brilliant as my friend, at least I was capable of matching his courage. “I am sorry to have been so distracted today, Holmes. I have had something on my mind—a question for whose answer I must turn to you. I have wondered whether it would be better to keep silent. But my inattention today, when you might have required my assistance, is only one of the reasons which appear to me to recommend frankness.”

“Very wise.” He had listened to this halting, incoherent preamble with inhuman patience. Only the occasional slitting open of one restless eye told me that he wished I would get to the point.

“We have known each other a long time. Twelve years, I believe.”

Holmes made a slight gesture, as if he would have added some precision to my round number but thought better of it.

“I have ever looked upon you as a dear friend,” I continued. “Indeed, as more than a friend. Yet of late, I must confess that it is not quite in the light of friendship that I have considered you.”

I heard his sharp intake of breath; his fingertips pressed together. Did he understand me?

“Your friendship is still my most cherished possession,” I clarified, in case he had not. “That has not changed. Yet warmer elements have intruded...” I trailed off.

One eye opened halfway, gleaming. I could not breathe. “Be precise, Watson!”

“I find,” I said with some difficulty, “that I have been—that I would like—that I love you, Holmes. As—as a man.”

Both eyes had snapped open now, and fixed on me. “Let me be sure I entirely understand you, Watson. You are telling me that you have backwards scaled the steps of honest Plato’s ladder—that you have progressed from enjoying the union of our minds and souls to desiring also a union of our bodies.”

There was something so characteristic in this speech that, despite my anxiety, I smiled as I nodded.

“Ah!” he breathed, and leaned eagerly across the table, a flush rising in his cheeks. He made as if to steeple his fingers once more—but one hand slid upwards and curled over the other, sinuous as a cat.

I watched his hands, because I could not meet his eye until he had spoken. Had he no more to say? 

But he only sat and watched me as though I were the most intriguing problem that had been laid before him in months. 

“Have I surprised you?” I asked at last. “Or have you...expected me to say so?”

He tilted his head like a curious bird. “Neither alternative quite covers the facts. I hope you will not think it vanity, my dear Watson, when I tell you that I have many times looked for such a declaration in the course of our acquaintance.”

The blood rushed hot to my face. “Have I really been so obvious?”

“I should not say so. I was never sure of my conclusions, and your continued silence made three explanations appear to me the most probable.”

I sat transfixed in my chair. Did he really mean to lecture me—now, while I waited with bated breath for the verdict that would decide my life?

Evidently so, for he stood, putting his back to the fire and his hands in his pockets. “The first,” he said in the didactic tone I knew so well, “was the one which you have now confirmed: that your attraction was a half-formed, unconscious one. Surely to point it out to you would have been too impertinent even for me. The second was that you did understand it, but had no desire to act upon it. The third, of course, was that I was mistaken, and only my own wishes had put such a hope into my mind. Since emotion biases the judgment, I think it best not to rely on deductive science in private life, but, as unsatisfactory as it may be, to operate as the great mass of—”

“Hope,” I interrupted, a little dazed. “Had put such a _hope_ into your mind?”

He frowned. “Yes?”

“Then you also—?”

“But you were aware of that.”

“Aware of it? By no means. What...I do not understand you.” I could find no meaning for his words but that he returned my feelings, and had for some years at least. Yet the conversation seemed to me to have taken such a bizarre turn that I did not trust my own conclusions.

He regarded me in astonishment. “You are joking, Watson.”

“I was never more in earnest in my life. I am very dense, no doubt, but I must ask for clarification in my turn. You would not be averse to changing the nature of our relations, then?”

He smiled. “Entirely averse, my dear Watson. Its expression may alter, but the fundamental _character_ of our relations has been wholly satisfactory to me for more years than you evidently care to admit to. I do not allow that it has changed.” A brighter light came into his eyes as he pushed off the mantel and stood by my chair, regarding my face intently. Then he leaned precipitously over the table until his elbow rested upon it, and very deliberately brushed his fingers against mine. 

I sucked in a breath.

The look of gratification that came into his face—but it was not only his face: he radiated a private triumph so profound, so perfectly suffused throughout his body, that I should have felt it as erotic, even had it not been erotic in itself. He flung himself back into his chair and regarded me, eyes gleaming. “We may adjust the habits,” he continued, his voice imbued with the same sensual satisfaction, “and rearrange some of the limbs and outward flourishes. But I think, Watson, not the spirit.”

Had this really been the spirit of our friendship all this time?

But whether it had been or no, I realized that was not his meaning. He meant that we would be intimate friends and companions still—that the bond between us would have sufficed him, even if I had never spoken. “And you thought I _knew_ that you would welcome such a revelation?”

He laughed—a soft, exultant sound. “Ah, Watson! There is the danger of seeing without observing. I thought you knew, because I looked over some of your accounts of our adventures—in particular your little pamphlet on the sign of the four. Your eye is sharp, and your powers of retention good; despite your unfortunate tendency towards sensationalism, you have a way of clearly organizing and ordering the most relevant facts. The result is that other people are liable to draw more inferences than you have yourself, and to assume that you have drawn them also.”

“What did I miss, Holmes?”

He leapt from his chair and paced eagerly up and down, ticking the facts off on his fingers. I could not tell if he had forgotten the personal implications in the delight of explaining his reasoning, or whether he was only, simply, irrepressibly delighted. “My pronounced lack of enthusiasm, when you remarked on the future Mrs. Watson’s attractions; my extreme agitation and dejection of spirits, coinciding at every point with your visits to Lower Camberwell; my more than ordinarily marked attentions to yourself, going so far as to serve you a supper of oysters and white wine with the deplorably transparent remark that you had never recognized my merits as a housekeeper; my unconcealed dismay at the news of your engagement; my listlessness afterwards. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it will suffice for present purposes. Each individual circumstance is subject to a thousand interpretations, but taken in concert, they really suggested nothing to you?”

“I must confess they did not,” I said ruefully. It was no new experience to hear him forge a clear and elegant chain of reasoning out of a baffling morass of detail. But I must admit that though I had been deeply interested in the many cases of great public and private import which we had solved, none had ever thrilled and amazed me so thoroughly as this. 

He laughed and shook his head. “A salutary check upon my self-importance! It is a common enough error to imagine one’s own doings more interesting and salient to others than they really are, but I have compounded it with the further error—common, at least, in myself—of expecting others to arrive at the same results when provided with the same data. In consequence I have done you a real injustice, when I should have known better. But I had really been determined to bring no cloud over your happiness. I had made efforts of tact which I flattered myself were entirely successful. I hope you can forgive my pique, when I thought you had seen through me after all, and published my disappointment for the _divertissement_ of the English-speaking public.”

My dismay had been growing as he spoke. I had risen from my seat, and now burst out with, “I would never for the world betray you in such a fashion, Holmes. That you suspected I would purposely expose you to ridicule—that I would put you in danger—”

He waved his hand. “Oh, there was certainly nothing actionable in your account. I was merely embarrassed, and a little hurt. But I can now comfort myself that while some no doubt drew the correct inference, the majority must have been as obtuse as you yourself.”

“ _Merely_ embarrassed and hurt? Holmes!”

His smile widened affectionately. “As I said, I should certainly have known better. I told you that emotion biases the judgement. Forgive me, Watson; I did not mean to distress you any more than you meant to distress me. And I hope you do not think I have been pining away like the lily maid of Astolat all these years. When it comes to the affections, I attach the least significance to the physical aspect. I was chiefly concerned with losing the pleasure of your company, and as we soon saw a great deal of each other again, I resigned myself without too great a struggle.” A shadow passed over his face. “I could wish for your sake, Watson, that you had stayed away from Baker Street longer.”

A lump came into my throat. “Thank you.” It had been nearly two years since my wife’s death, but her loss could yet strike with undiminished force—as indeed it still does, though with less regularity than formerly. A double loss, I had thought it then: a total cessation of all that had made my life bright and interesting to me. “I have been wishing—it is selfishness, perhaps, but I have been wishing to talk over my perplexity and my discoveries with Mary, and hear her quick, sage advice.”

“If it seems to you disloyal to her memory to enter into a new attachment—” he began kindly. 

I shook my head. “Thank you, Holmes. But I know that she would want my happiness above all, just as I always wanted hers.”

“She was a wonderful woman." There was a pause, and he added with more diffidence, “I was very much affected to hear of her death.”

I nodded, for I could not speak.

Holmes expressed his sympathy as he so often did, by his manner and actions: refilling my coffee cup and pushing the biscuits towards me with an unalloyed sincerity that would have made me laugh if I had not been so touched.

“Were you jealous of her?” I asked him. It seemed strange that we should speak of all this _now,_ but I had often observed how a secret once spoken brought others with it, like an avalanche or a rockslide.

“A little,” he admitted with a sidelong smile. “I had been used to have you entirely at my beck and call. But her candour and generosity towards me would have made resentment embarrassing, as well as unjust. I can recall no more than one or two occasions upon which she asserted her superior rights, and prevented my spiriting you away from hearth and home—or my appearing precipitously to warm myself at the one, and occupy the other, at the oddest hours and in the most peculiar circumstances.”

I smiled. “She liked having the house to herself now and again. Besides, she was able to pay extended visits out of town without me, or have friends to stay for weeks at a time, without ever feeling in the wrong.” My home had been very quiet, that last year before Holmes’s return. As quiet as the grave, and as full of the dead.

“I miss her,” he said quietly. “I have been the gainer by her death, and the reflection is a bitter one.”

“She missed you as well.” My voice was thick. “We read your letter together many times; it moved her very much that you had remembered her, at such a moment.”

He pressed his lips together. “I can never apologize to you enough, my dear Watson. I would give a great deal, to be able to apologize to her.”

“You cannot know how I longed to tell her of your return.” My eyes and heart were full. Indeed, I was conscious that my declaration of love had taken so mournful a turn as to be slightly absurd. “She would have been so glad...” My voice broke.

He reached across the table and squeezed my hand. I clasped his gratefully, and felt the same shock as before—the shock of hitting the ground after a long fall, or catching sight of a human form after a long journey through deserted regions.

“I thought of writing to her,” Holmes said. “I hope you will not take it amiss when I say her self-control was more perfect than yours—and of course, her emotions were less involved. But I could not possibly have asked her to keep it from you.”

“You might have trusted me,” I protested for the thousandth time. By now it was more for form’s sake than anything else, yet I could not forego it.

“It was not merely my own safety for which I feared,” was his rejoinder, which I had heard as often. “Yes, yes, Watson, you would have gladly shared any danger, and I am sure your wife would have gallantly seconded you. But could I in conscience allow it? I had already risked your life merely to secure to myself one last golden week in your company. Had I been less selfish then, I might have chanced being more so after. But Colonel Moran had seen me alive, and he had certainly seen us together in the preceding days. He had probably also witnessed you opening my letter, without any way of guessing what I had told you in it. Of course he would set a watch upon you—and if he had suspected for a moment that you knew my whereabouts, I have no doubt he would have acted swiftly. Neither you nor Mrs. Watson would have been safe.” He rose restlessly from his chair once more, and went to stir the fire. “But perhaps I did wrong, not to come when she died. I asked Mycroft more than once to come round and see you, but he would not give himself the trouble.”

 _That,_ I had never heard. I shook my head, surprised and touched. “That was kind of you, Holmes. And of course I would have welcomed your brother for your sake. But do not be offended, if I tell you that I think his company would have depressed me. There is so much of you in him, and yet not the best—your largeness of spirit, your imagination, your indefatigable care for others’ welfare.”

He chuckled. “You have known me much too long, Watson, to expect compliments to offend me. But it was chiefly for my own sake. I wanted an accurate report as to your health and spirits.”

I smiled at him. “I don’t suppose it would have comforted you. But I could hardly be in the pink of health at such a time. I muddled through.”

He frowned. “You were much too thin when I returned.”

I hid a smile. “Indeed?” It was tempting to make reference to glass houses and stones. Yet even my merely average discernment had perceived that his habits of pressing food and rest upon me, and of minutely tracking the progress of my health, had their source in my convalescence, and sprang from a solicitude I had then very badly needed. And these little indications that our early days together remained so sharply in his memory had their charm for me, and their sweetness. “How many pounds had I lost?”

“Just under sixteen, I think, since Meiringen.”

I laughed. “Well, I have gained most of them back now, so you may be easy.”

“Ye-es.” He eyed me discontentedly. “Most of them.”

We stayed under some little constraint for a minute or two. It seemed tasteless to return to the original subject, and besides, my ardor was banked for the moment. Yet I was unwilling to let the matter drop entirely. I was hesitating over how to proceed when my companion spoke decisively.

“Let us go out to a concert. We may resume our conversation upon our return.”

I gratefully agreed. “There is one point, however, which still troubles me. Holmes, you have said that you do not attach much importance to the physical side of love. I do not perfectly take your meaning, and I should like to know—that is, I cannot pretend to such a degree of spiritual enlightenment, and yet I would never wish to impose upon you in any way...” 

He laughed. “Candidly, Watson, up to now I _have_ rather avoided the awkwardnesses and exposures involved, for the rewards seemed so minor as scarcely to justify the effort. But I must cease to call myself a scientist, if I were not to make the practical experiment with _you,_ when I have hypothesized so thoroughly.”

Holmes had astonished me yet again. _Hypothesized so thoroughly!_ “Have you really, Holmes? About—me? About us?” The idea that he had imagined us in bed—had brought all his wonderful inventive and predictive faculties to bear on it—quite stole my breath.

“Indeed, I have smashed my own rule to pieces.” He shook his head regretfully, but there was humor in his eye. 

“What rule is that?”

“Never to theorize in advance of the facts. However, as it did not matter whether my speculations were correct ones, I judged the lapse permissible.”

His words electrified me. The feeling was so familiar that I understood at last what he had seen all along: the fundamental nature of our relations had not changed. I could not know what had caused their erotic facet to turn uppermost at last, and catch the light—only that it was so. “Age does not wither you, Holmes,” I said, repeating his own quotation back to him, “nor custom stale your infinite variety.”

His bright eyes and flushed cheeks betrayed once more the uninhibited vanity that had first rendered him a charming enigma to me. “I trust not, Watson. No, I do not think I need fear that our researches will bore you as much as our case did today.”

“I was not bored,” I murmured. “I was looking at your hands.”

His lips parted, and his tongue darted out to wet them. The next moment, he was going briskly to his own door. “Will Tschaïkowsky suit you? I missed his swan-song by a mere month last spring, and Richter has finally added it to his bill at St. James’s Hall. Afterwards we may stay for the Wagner or not, as fancy dictates.”

“Perfectly.” I got to my own feet. “Holmes?”

“Yes, Watson?”

I was content to wait until after the concert for nearly everything. Yet I did want some token—some sense impression—to assure me I had not imagined it all. I held out my arms, uncertain—and to my relief, he hurried gladly into them. 

I squeezed him, too tightly perhaps, and pressed my face into his shoulder. His wiry arms came around me, and he let out a long breath. I could sense his slight hesitation, and his relief. He was alive. He was with me. He—loved me!

I slid my hand up to cup his skull, wondering at the texture of his sleek dark hair against my palm. This delicate swell of bone shielded the most subtle and enthralling mystery of my life. I curled my thumb, stroking lightly, and felt his contented hum. I turned my face towards his; his tall frame curved willingly at the pressure of my hand. Somehow I was startled when our mouths touched.

Our kiss was brief, yet afterwards he seemed by some imperceptible process to have got the upper hand— _he_ held _me_ , and turned my head to nip sharply at my earlobe.

“Yes,” he said softly. “How pleasant it is to have one’s conjectures confirmed. I have always suspected, Watson, that I would like very much to bite your earlobe.”

I was excessively pleased myself, but did not quite know what to say or do. 

“Poor Watson, you look as flustered as I am myself. It throws the mind into a strange confusion, does it not, to respond to an accustomed stimulus in an unaccustomed manner?”

I looped my arms around his neck. “Indeed it does. But you have taught me to welcome confusion, as a natural stage in any investigation.”

He pulled out of my grasp, lips curving mischievously. “Well, put on your hat, and let us give our atoms a little time to settle.”

I was quite sure I would be in a fever by the symphony’s third movement. But the thought came to me that I would relish the suspense, now I was sure of the essential outcome. The idea was new and startling—and yet when I considered it, rather obvious. I wondered if Holmes was already aware of it.

Perhaps it was not entirely a bad thing for one’s own mind to reserve some secrets and surprises to itself. The alternative, after all, would be that there was no more to learn of myself, and no more that life could teach me.

“The game’s afoot,” I murmured to myself as I set my hat on my head, and smiled.


End file.
